Vehicle monitoring systems are often included in connection with large work vehicles such as off-highway mining trucks, front shovels, over-the-highway trucks, and the like. For example, the system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,079,727 issued to Yasue et al. on Jan. 7, 1992 includes a plurality of sensors located throughout the vehicle for use by a control center.
Many vehicle monitoring systems include some form of communication network to allow various control systems and displays to transmit and receive information obtained from sensors located on the vehicle. Information from one of the sensors on the vehicle will often need to be shared with various controls and displays. Similarly, individual controls will often have fewer inputs than the number of sensors from which it must receive information. These considerations have led to communication networks in which various controls are able to communicate with each other and have also led to the use of sensor interfaces that are connected to multiple sensor inputs. The sensor interfaces multiplex the sensor signals and transmit the information to other controls via a data bus. Such a system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,804,937 issued to Barbiaux et al. on Feb. 14, 1989. The system disclosed in Barbiaux et al. provides for a bus type configuration in the communication network.
The evolving complexity and use of vehicle management systems has demanded increasing design time. Each machine or vehicle management system application is different, requiring a different set of sensors and being connected to a different set of different controls and/or displays. Thus, a vehicle management system must be designed for each different application.
Therefore, it became desirable to have a basic vehicle management system or platform which is flexible. The vehicle management platform can be adapted/configured to work on various types, models, series or configurations of machines. However, each machine or application has different requirements and specifications. Each system has different sensors, different displays, and connects to different modules. Thus, application of the basic system still requires significant engineering design time and software engineer programming.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.